Meanwhile, Radar kept pace with the three-wheeler, looking up at me with a doggy grin that almost shouted Aren’t we having fun?
On we went. And on.
Every now and then I got a clear view of the sky ahead and I stepped up on the three-wheeler’s seat in an effort to glimpse the city wall, which had to be the biggest thing in the landscape, except for the three spires of the palace. I couldn’t see it. And those spires were now on my right, which seemed impossible. Surely if I’d crossed in front of the palace I would have cut the Gallien Road, and I hadn’t. I felt like screaming. I felt like curling up in a ball with my hands around my head. I wanted to find a policeman, which is what my mother told me children were supposed to do if they got lost.
And all the time Radar was grinning up at me: Isn’t this great? Isn’t it just the coolest ever?
“We’re in trouble, girl.”
I pedaled on. No patch of blue in the sky now, and certainly no sun to guide me. Only buildings crowding in, some smashed, some merely vacant, all somehow hungry. The only sound was that faint, dull whispering. If it had been constant I might have been able to get used to it, but it wasn’t. It came in bursts, as if I were passing congregations of the unseen dead.
That terrible afternoon （I can never convey to you how terrible） seemed to go on forever, but at last I began to sense the first draining toward evening. I think I cried a little but can’t remember for sure. If I did, I think it was as much for Radar as for myself. I had brought her all this way, and I’d accomplished what I’d come for, but in the end it was all going to be for nothing. Because of the goddamned dwarf. I wished Radar had ripped out his throat instead of the seat of his pants.
Worst of all was the trust I saw in Radar’s eyes every time she looked up at me.
You trusted a fool, I thought. Worse luck for you, honey.
2
We came to an overgrown park surrounded on three sides by gray buildings stacked with empty balconies. They looked to me like a cross between the expensive condos lining Chicago’s Gold Coast and prison cellblocks. In the center of it was a piece of huge statuary on a high pedestal. It appeared to be a man and a woman flanking an enormous butterfly, but like all the other works of art I’d encountered in Lilimar （not to mention the poor murdered mermaid）， it had been mostly destroyed. The head and one wing of the butterfly had been pulverized. The other wing had survived, and based on the way it had been carved （all color was gone, if there had ever been any）， I was sure it was a monarch. The man and woman might have been a king and queen in days of yore, but there was no way to tell because both of them were gone from the knees up.
As I sat looking at this vandalized tableau, three bells rang out across the haunted city, each peal spaced out and solemn. You don’t need to be through the gate when the three bells ring, Claudia had said, but you must be out of Lilimar soon after! Before dark!
Dark would be soon.
I started to pedal on—knowing it would be fruitless, knowing I was caught in the spiderweb Peterkin had called the Lily, wondering what fresh horror the night soldiers would bring when they came for us—and then I stopped, struck by a sudden idea that was simultaneously wild and perfectly reasonable.
I did a U-turn and returned to the park. I started to dismount the trike, considered the height of the pedestal that ruined tableau stood on, and changed my mind. I pedaled into the high grass, hoping there were none of those nasty yellow flowers to give me a burn. I also hoped the three-wheeler wouldn’t get bogged down, because the ground was mushy from all the rain. I put my back into it and kept pedaling. Radar stayed with me, not walking or even running but leaping along. Even in my current situation, that was wonderful to see.
The statuary tableau was surrounded by standing water. I parked in it, hung my pack over the handlebars, stood on the seat of the trike, and reached up. By rising on my toes, I could just get my fingers over the gritty edge of the pedestal. Thanking God that I was still in fairly good shape, I did a chin-up, got first one forearm and then the other on a surface that was littered with stone chips, and scrambled the rest of the way. I had one bad moment when I thought I was going to tip over backward, landing on the trike and probably breaking something, but I gave one final lunge and grabbed the stone woman’s foot. I got a couple of good belly-scratches from the rubble as I pulled myself the rest of the way but sustained no real damage.
Radar was looking up at me and barking. I told her to hush and she did. She kept wagging her tail, though: Isn’t he wonderful? Look how high he is!